What ARM is in your pocket?

ARM based processors seem to be taking over the world. Okay, they are taking over the mobile world. Most new smartphones and PMPs in use today and coming out soon have an ARM processor of some sort inside them. iPhone? ARM processor from Samsung. Zune HD? ARM processor from nVidia. Just to name two.

What is an ARM processor and how can you compare them effectively? ARM processor have been around for quite some time actually. 1983 to be specific. ARM is a RISC based processor design. RISC, reduced instruction set chip, is designed to speed up operations by having fewer but more optimized instruction. The 80s saw quite a battle between CISC and RISC, most notably Power vs. Pentium, even if you don't know the history I bet you can guess how that one came out.

ARM survived this war by being a niche player. Their specialty is low power consumption. They are very good at getting a lot of processing power out of very little electrical power. This capability is essential for todays mobile gadgets.

How do you compare the innards of all these newfangled devices though? It is not a very straightforward process unfortunately. The part of a device that is ARM powered is getting pretty small these days. Most of the chip companies making ARM chipsets have added quite a bit of extra bits to the CPU. The nVidia Tegra for instance has 11 processors only two of which are ARM. The rest are used for graphics, sound, and video.

Here is a list of some of the ARM prodcuts on the market today and what ARM version they are based on (another area that adds confusion in and of itself, see this chart):

Qualcomm Snapdragon Cortex-A8
nVidia Tegra ARM11
TI OMAP 3xxxx Cortex-A8
Creative Zii ARM926EJ-S
Samsung Cortex-A8

As you can see three of these use the Cortex-A8 core where nVidia and Zii use older cores. The nVidia Tegra has been getting most of the press out of all these though OMAP chipset from TI is in use in more devices. In fact you can't even get a device with Tegra right now, the first one, the Zune HD, won't be out until September.

The most successful one on this list is probably going to surprise you though. The Samsung chipset is used in the most popular phone on the market, the iPhone 3GS. Apple doesn't really talk about the hardware in the iPhone much. I'm not even sure how many iPhone users realize the 3G and 3GS use different processors.

The Snapdragon is in use in one phone currently the Toshiba TG01. Qualcomm seems to be going after a different market with Snapdragon though, Smartbooks. A Smartbook is like a Netbook but with an ARM process running Android. They showed off an Eee earlier but Asus has pulled it back and doesn't talk about it anymore.

An interesting but pretty much ignored item on the list is the Zii (actually Zii is the platform, ZMS-05 is the processor) from Creative's Zii Labs. This seems to use an older ARM core but Creative hypes up the performance of its chipset quite a bit. Creative has put together a reference design called the Zii EGG, pretty much an iPod Touch look alike that can run Creative's own linux OS Plaszma or interestingly Android. Not much is really known about the Zii though.

So, how do you compare the innards of all these new fangled gadgets coming out? Heck if I know. Too little information and well, its a bit too technical for me. Does it matter though? Not really. What really matters is how they work. The technical bits of a device are secondary to its function. So long as it isn't underpowered the software on your new wizbang gizmo is more important than the hardware.

The Zune HD and Games

It seems that almost every time there is a story about the Zune HD one of the things asked is if there will be apps for it. Mostly this is due to comparisons to the iPod Touch. What I also usually see is that XNA Studio does not get mentioned. What does XNA Studio have to do with it? In version 3.0 Microsoft added the ability to target the Zune, thats what. The same free development environment for making games for the Xbox and PCs can also make games to play on a Zune.

Now XNA Game Studio is most definitely aimed at making games. You're not going to be making productivity apps with it. But Microsoft has the infrastructure in place for a Zune app store. The Zune Marketplace already sells music, video, podcasts, etc. Add another section for games and apps and they are all set to go.

We already know that Microsoft is putting together an app store for WinMo. Apps for the Zune could possibly come from there as well.

I just find it frustrating to see so many people willfully ignore so many pieces of the puzzle when trying to determine what is going on.

1st Amendment right to speak anonymously?

Google was recently ordered by a court this week to reveal the identity of a Blogger user that made disparaging remarks against a Canadian model. The model sued Google to force them to reveal the name of the author of the blog, presumably so she could sue them for libel and defamation.

Now comes news that the outed blogger is suing Google, http://mashable.com/2009/08/24/skanks-of-new-york-lawsuit/. The author wants up to $15 million from Google for failing to defend her privacy. Her claim is that she has a 1st amendment right to speak anonymously.

The 1st Amendment right to anonymous speech has been tested a number of times and is generally upheld. Most of the cases involve political or religious speech though. Do you have a right to anonymity if you engage in illegal or libelous speech though?

If I post a video of criminal activity that I clearly either witnessed or participated in anonymously do you think I would have my identity protected by YouTube? I don't think so, the police would be in their right to seek me out to investigate the crime.

Same thing goes with libelous or defamatory statements. If you run around spreading harmful lies about someone you can expect that person to try to locate you and sue you for libel. Especially if that person is famous. It does not matter whether you do this online or offline, libel is libel and can get you sued.

There are a lot of protections for what we can say here in the U.S. We can badmouth our government, praise our religion, and even rant against corporations. But when we maliciously lie and defame private individuals those individuals have a right of redress and that right can get our right of anonymous free speech stripped away from us.

You can say a lot of things in this country but you can also go too far. If you go too far, you have a good chance of being made to pay for it.

Gadget Lust - Zune HD

I want one of these. I don't need a PMP nor do I even know fully what I would really do with one but I want one anyway.

The Zune HD will be the latest addition to Microsoft's Zune lineup when it launches in September. The specs for it are pretty nice. It will have a 3.3 inch OLED touchscreen, the first touchscreen Zune. The aspect ratio will be 16:9, the same as high definition wide screen video, and will have a resolution of 480x272.

The Zune HD has two features that give it the HD name. The first is its ability to output 720p video. You need to buy a base that has an HDMI video port on it in order to use this feature though. The second is HD radio. HD radio is digital radio, just like the television signals are now.

The HD video on the Zune HD is made possible by NVidia's Tegra chipset. This is an ARM11 based processor coupled with graphics and DSP chips all wrapped up into a tidy and power sipping package. This is the first of many devices coming along that will be using Tegra and many are looking forward to how this will shake up the PMP and Netbook markets.

The Zune HD has WiFi built in just like the rest of the Zune lineup. The Zune Marketplace will retain its place as the source of the content available. You can get music, videos, podcasts, and apps.

Apps you say? Yes, Microsoft hasn't really talked about this much yet but I believe there will be apps for the Zune HD. XNA Studio can not only build games for the XBox and PCs but it can target the Zune as well.

Microsoft is integrating the Zune and XBox as well. I would look to see more on this as the launch date gets closer.

For more coverage of the Zune HD see Gizmodo and Engadget

Looking for work

The job search market has changed since the last time I had to look for a job significantly. There was a time when Monster, HotJobs, Career Builder, and Dice seemed to have the market locked up. Now there are more job sites than I can count. The market seems to have fractured into many little pieces.

It is not only the multitude of sites that has changed the landscape but the types of them as well. The big job boards are still around but there is another class of site that has come along, aggregators. These sites are setup to scour the web for job listings. These can come from the big sites, niche sites, corporate job boards, wherever they can think to find them.

But even the aggregators are old hat now. Now it seems that your network is the job hunting frontier. LinkedIn seems to be the leader here. I even read an article the other day suggesting that your LinkedIn profile is your resume these days.

Much has changed indeed. But in many ways it is still all the same. Everyone still wants to look at your resume, all the sites ask for mostly the same information in filling out your profile. It seems to be a strange mix of the old and the new.

How do you go about looking for a job these days? Networking seems to be the new old thing. Getting job leads from coworkers, professional contacts, friends, relatives has been the way many having found their jobs for generations. Now it has a online, social networking, Web 2.0 twist to it.

Maybe this is why the big sites weren't able to keep their dominant positions. They tried to move the job hunt away from who you know to what you know. This is all very well and good but I think the trend in how hire people has gone to a who you are rather than a what you are basis.

The last time I had to search for a new job from scratch was in 2000. It was hard. I focused my efforts on the big sites and didn't make much headway. In the end, the job I found was obtained through an agency. They found me through one of the big sites but in the end it was who I was rather than what I was that landed me the job.

"End of life counseling" or "Death Panels"?

There has been a lot of talk lately about a proposed provision in the health reform legislation that is working its way through the House and Senate. The proposal is one that would enable a doctor to be paid to be a part of a family meeting about end of life situations.

This proposal has been attacked as a call for the institution of "Death Panels" wherein those paying the bills will be enabled to decide if a person is going to live or die based on purely financial considerations. Sarah Palin in particular seems to be leading this charge.

There seems to be a less strident form of this criticism that states that it is inevitable that these end of life decisions will be made by bureaucrats rather than the family as a means of controlling costs in the health care system.

What I find difficult in this line of reasoning is that the current system is already setup and predisposed to death panels. Who gets to decide what kind of treatment you get these days? Your doctor? Your family? Somewhat. Who is really generally in the drivers seat of these decisions? The insurance company, that's who.

Your insurance company is in business to provide you with the means to pay for your medical care if and when you need it. It is also in the business of making money. Having customers who need the insurance companies services is counterproductive to their goal of making money. This I think is the profound dilemma of insurance of any kind. Their two primary goals are in direct conflict.

Is it inevitable that a government run health care plan would of necesity have to deny treatment for some who are near the end of their life? I don't think it is, certainly no more so than it is inevitable that a private for profit health insurance company would have to do the same.

The argument that government should stay out of health care decisions and leave it to us and our doctors sounds good but it isn't anywhere near reality. The government and your health insurance company are already deeply involved in your health care decisions, and they will be whether health care reform is enacted or not.

In the end I would ask yourself this. "Do I want my health care to be controlled entirely by my for profit health insurer?"

My answer? A resounding HELL NO!

So, I was listening to a story on NPR yesterday and I had an idea.

The story was about a new form of doctor's office called "Medical Home". The idea is to have doctors spend more time with their patients and really be able to evaluate their health in an unhurried environment. The story also talked about how doctors are available through email and such as well.

My thought was, why stop there? Why not go straight out Web 2.0 on this idea. I couldn't help but think what would a mashup of Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault and Facebook be like?

Here's the idea. You would have a central place to keep your health information and to communicate with your doctor. Your news feed could be anything from a general how you are feeling to what your blood sugar level is. There are any number of stats that people with ongoing conditions keep track of that you doctor would then be enabled to track and be able to point out an anomaly and ask about it.

Converstations could be had with you doctor and their staff, appointments could be made, reminders sent. All under your control. Need to switch doctors? "Unfriend" your current doctor and invite your new doctor. All of your records are right there for the new doctor to review and have available.

To work this would have to be independent of your doctor's office and even your insurance company. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to switch carriers or doctors easily enough.

I think that someone that could pull this off could possibly find a great deal of success. Let me know what you think about this idea.

Okay, let's fire this thing up! Restarting this blog because, well... because I have time to do it.

I am currently looking for work having been laid off from Borland on the occasion of Micro Focus acquiring the company I have worked for since 2000 (minus that time I took out to sell wine - we'll get to that later).

If anyone has a lead on a job for a jack of all trades computer guy, please feel free to send it over.